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Indian – From All Purity

From All Purity is the fifth full length from Chicago based extreme music nihilists, and not many bands can claim to have made an album close to being as misanthropic as this. Combining the oppressiveness of sludge with harsh noise elements and a good deal of black metal bite, the sound they make throughout this album is nothing other than a fucked up mess of caustic cacophony.

This album is not for the weak hearted. Slow and plodding wave after wave of crushing guitars assault your senses, with a crash of drums pounding over the top to provide another kind of bludgeoning. The guitar tone is so thick it’s practically tangible, constantly bombarding with you with a wall of sound so heavy it’s hard to breathe, with the rumbling bass thundering away and adding that extra density to the already thick sound. Plodding under the sheer weight of the tone, the music is slow, creating a caustic atmosphere on opener Rape. What really completes the intensity of the sound is those vocals. Dylan O’ Toole pulls off some of the most fucked up, tortured and down right inhuman vocals you’ve ever heard. Slow and sharp, his screams are indiscernible, the expressions of pure misery and misanthropy, and it’s hard to put into words just how intense the vocals are. The weight of the music combined with the torturous vocals makes one envisage being trapped underground by ten tonnes of earth unable to move, struggling in vain against the inevitable.

Blasts of feedback greet you on The Impetus Bleeds before more caustic riffs and bludgeoning drums reverberate through your skull, and those intense screams and blasts of noise create an unsettling atmosphere, the slow tempo making you feel trapped, unable to escape from the maelstrom of sound. Lead guitar near the end does nothing to ease the tension, just adding another layer of sound to the cacophony. THIS is what heavy is all about. Directional is pure stoner doom with a sludgy vibe to the guitars, and monstrous riffs and vocals which go straight for the throat, Dylan sounding more beast than man. The other tracks all follow the same sludgy, caustic fucked up nature, except Clarify. which is a mess of harsh noise devastation. Static harsh electronics provide an unsettling backdrop for altered vocals, giving the already insane vocals an even more terrifying aspect, a mess of completely incomprehensible screaming. It’s a really weird one and while crazy at first it loses it’s edge somewhat as it goes along, it gets less intense after a few minutes.

One downside to the album is it’s all one pace, and rarely deviates from it’s slow crawl. It’s so unrelentingly heavy though that even though the pace is repetitive it never lets up or becomes any less of a vicious barbaric listen. An injection of speed in paces wouldn’t have gone amiss however.

From all Purity is simply harrowing, the experience is so fucked up it’s not even pleasant, they’ve got their heavy intense sound down so well it’s a terrifying uncomfortable listen. Pure evil.